Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) excoriated the New York Times on Sunday, describing the so-called newspaper of record as “a propaganda outlet by liberals, for liberals.”

“There was a time when journalists covered ‘news.’ The NYT has given up on even pretending anymore. Today, they are Pravda, a propaganda outlet by liberals, for liberals,” Cruz said on Twitter Sunday.

The criticism comes after leaked transcripts from a newsroom meeting at the Times last week revealed that Times executive editor Dean Baquet is deliberately shifting the newspaper’s editorial vision to aggressively cover the narrative that President Donald Trump is racist.

“I think that we’ve got to change. I mean, the vision for coverage for the next two years is what I talked about earlier: How do we cover a guy who makes these kinds of remarks? How do we cover the world’s reaction to him? How do we do that while continuing to cover his policies? How do we cover America, that’s become so divided by Donald Trump?” Baquet said at the meeting.

Baquet explained the shift is necessary because the previous editorial emphasis on the Trump-Russia collusion narrative was undercut by the conclusions of Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Cruz called Baquet’s remarks a “firing offense.”

There was a time when journalists covered “news.” The NYT has given up on even pretending anymore. Today, they are Pravda, a propaganda outlet by liberals, for liberals. These remarks at their “town hall” are a scandal & would be a firing offense at any real journalistic outlet. https://t.co/3xZiABaBYv

Cruz later said the Times is “destroying itself” over its hatred for Trump, and claimed the paper is “deliberately stoking the fires of racial tension & hatred.”

If you care about journalism, or the First Amendt, READ the transcript. The Editor says (in effect) “for 2 yrs, we covered ‘Russia, Russia, Russia,’ facts be damned; now we’ll scream ‘racism, racism, racism’ for 18 mos, and the rest of the media follow us.” That’s not journalism. https://t.co/TPkpB0DjNj

The NYT is destroying itself w/ Trump hatred. And it’s ultimately bad for freedom of the press when “journalists” openly revel in being partisan propagandists. When our Nation is so tribalised that each side has their own “news” & “facts” and we don’t even talk to each other. https://t.co/pH2GIcEAYg

It’s also deeply cynical—at a time when racial tensions are raw, for the NYT to be deliberately stoking the fires of racial tension & hatred. Ironically, their approach is the obverse of their original headline (before they succumbed to the mob): “NYT Urges Racism Vs Unity.” https://t.co/Pyuzdhd1PP